The Rise of Crowdfunding

When a word gets shortlisted for the OED you can be reasonably confident that it is seeing a bit of use. This year the word crowdfunding was shortlisted for the US version of that august publication. Frankly we at twintangibles are not surprised as it is a subject we get asked about more and more.

The proposed definition is Crowdfunding:The practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet. At its most basic, that definition gets to the core of it, but what that definition doesn’t get into is a more detailed analysis dealing with the role of social media or concepts like the The Long Tail, and how these are key components in successful crowdfunding. But it does at least capture the aspect that is causing the word to become increasingly popular, and that is that it is about raising money.

At a time when the traditional mechanisms of raising funding to – say – launch a business, start a project, or even make a film, are increasingly tough, then people start looking for alternatives, and crowdfunding is one of them.

Seemingly everyday we hear of new projects (even the Krankies are involved in one!) and new platforms to raise finance via crowdfunding. In the US, it is apparent that the Obama administration have come to recognise that it has merit to potentially drive entrepreneurship and job creation and so plans are progressing to adjust SEC rules to make limited equity-based crowdfunding permissible. Closer to home, Brewdog have announced that their recent second crowdfunding campaign has been almost 100% taken up.

So, with all this in mind we are pleased to be able to announce that we have been asked to curate a series of articles and debates on the subject of crowdfunding for the Social Media Week global blog. Over the next few months we will be covering many aspects of this emerging trend and look forward to some interesting interviews, debates and comments. We will keep you posted as to when the series starts.